Reimagined French Postcards
For my creative project I chose to create a re-interpretation of the small pornographic photographs that were circulated around the turn of the century and referred to as “French Postcards.” There were a few of these on display during our visit to the Museum of Sex, some depicting women in lingerie, others showing two people mid-coitus, even wearing innocent smiles in one particularly memorable image.
These images are a clear example of the sexualization of people, though in today’s world of ubiquitous pornography they can seem quite innocent at times. Inspired by these images, and struck by the vast development of the sexualization process in the past century, I attempted to portray the process of sexualization while critiquing it. by choosing images of settings or scenes without people, and writing a poem about a sexual scenario associated with the setting on the back. In this way, the seemingly mundane becomes sexualized when you flip the card over, mirroring the idea that there is essential truth to be uncovered by explicitly disclosing sexual thoughts and experiences.
As a critical commentary on this process of sexualization, I avoid explicit details in the scenes the poems describe to demonstrate that the search for essential truth through sexuality always leaves you wanting, and that truth is elusive and unable to be captured in explicit details. I do not attempt to untangle truth through my poems, but rather to make a statement that untangling won’t get you to the truth anyway, so you may as well just accept and enjoy what you have.
The pictures are not my own. I cropped and framed them, but the original photo credits go to the following people:
The image of the bed comes from Lore Ferguson:
http://sayable.net/2012/09/but-his-joy-comes-in-the-mourning/
The image of the road comes from Amardeep Singh:
http://amardeeps.com/post/46816812238
The image of the laundromat comes from William Lounsbury:
http://williamlounsbury.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/the-laundromat-open-24-hours/
The image of the brownstones comes from Nikki of Nikki’s Images:
http://nikkisimages.wordpress.com/tag/brownstones/
May 25th, 2013 at 5:45 pm
Eli,
This was a well-thought out project, taking its inspiration from the Victorian era cards, its challenge to classification and specificity from Foucault, and its evocative poeticism from Whitman and other readings. Like your acting ability, I had not known that you were interested in writing poetry, since your essays have been written in such a clear academic style, so bravo to your range of talents!